As is well known in the art, most webpages have an address known as a URI. When a user visits a webpage the URI usually appears at the top of the webpage, notifying the user what webpage he is visiting.
URIs may also be used to identify other resources, including internet resources. Some internet resources may not be accessible by humans, but rather by automated agents. Some resources may not be visible on a webpage or using an internet browser.
Web developers generally create URIs for webpages that substantially describe the webpage. Self-describing URIs support productive flexible exploration of the worldwide web for human users, automated agents, as well as web developers.
Because web developers generally create self-describing web addresses, URIs many include sensitive information, such as a user name, a user social security number, and/or a user id. In many businesses which operate using the World Wide Web, there are a wide range of devices including, but not limited to, load balancers, proxy devices, and web servers, which log user URIs remote from a user location. These URIs, which may contain sensitive information. The sensitive information may become plainly visible and/or searchable to anyone with access to log files. Log files may be files which record the events that occur on a computer or server while an operating system or other software runs.
In addition, a user's personal computer, smartphone, PDA, tablet, or any other suitable computing device with internet capability may save the recently visited URIs in a URI history file, or any other suitable location. Any human or automated machine that may have, or obtain, access to the user's personal computing device could obtain sensitive information simply by viewing the list of URIs in the URI history file, or any other location, where the user's URI history may be stored.
Therefore, there is a need for a method and apparatus which would retain the benefits of self-describing URIs, yet provide a user with privacy regarding sensitive information which may be found in the URIs.